Renowned French scholar Gilles Kepel assessed the shifting dynamics of the Arab revolutions and their potential future trajectory. The Brookings Institution’s William McCants served as a discussant. Carnegie’s Karim Sadjadpour moderated.

Gilles Kepel

Gilles Kepel is professor and chair of Middle East and Mediterranean studies at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po). One of Europe’s most prominent interpreters of the Muslim world, he is author of Beyond Terror and Martyrdom: The Future of the Middle East (2008), The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West (2004), and Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (2000).

William McCants

William McCants is a fellow in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy and director of its Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World. He is also adjunct faculty at Johns Hopkins University and has held various government and think tank positions. From 2009 to 2011, McCants served as a U.S. State Department senior adviser for countering violent extremism. He is the author of Founding Gods, Inventing Nations: Conquest and Culture Myths from Antiquity to Islam (2011).

Karim Sadjadpour

Karim Sadjadpour is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He joined Carnegie after four years as the chief Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group based in Washington and Tehran, where he conducted dozens of interviews with senior Iranian officials and hundreds with Iranian intellectuals, clerics, dissidents, paramilitaries, businessmen, students, activists, and youth, among others.

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About the Middle East Program

The Carnegie Middle East Program combines in-depth local knowledge with incisive comparative analysis to examine economic, sociopolitical, and strategic interests in the Arab world. Through detailed country studies and the exploration of key crosscutting themes, the Carnegie Middle East Program, in coordination with the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, provides analysis and recommendations in both English and Arabic that are deeply informed by knowledge and views from the region. The program has special expertise in political reform and Islamist participation in pluralistic politics.